Six Times Cuddy Regretted Letting House Near Joy
by Namaste
Summary: Written for LJ's Come As You're Not party. Kidfic in House's world, which imagines a frustrating future life for Cuddy if "Joy" had turned out with a happier ending for her. House and Cuddy friendship. Now with bonus companion fic added.
1. Chapter 1

"Why is it so quiet?" Cuddy looks around House's apartment, sees Joy's diaper bag on the end of the couch, a bottle on the table, but there's no sign of Joy.

House doesn't look up from the TV as he nods toward the bedroom. "Because she's sleeping."

"How can she be -- " Cuddy shakes her head as she walks toward the bedroom. "She can't be sleeping." Joy's been teething for days, her cries keeping them both awake. But Cuddy sees Joy in the middle of the bed, surrounded by pillows and blankets to keep her from rolling off the mattress. She looks at her, sees her breathing deeply, her arms flung out on either side of her head.

She walks back into the living room. "How did you ..." she starts to ask.

"Drugs," House says. He tosses her a container from the table. Cuddy recognizes the label from the hospital pharmacy.

"Lidocaine?" She rounds the couch, stands between House and his TV. "You doped my baby?"

"I'm surprised you didn't. Fifteen minutes of that screeching, and I was ready to take her out to the woods and let her be raised by wolves."

"You doped my baby," Cuddy repeats. She walks back into the bedroom, flips on the light to look at Joy more closely. Joy doesn't react to the light.

"Oh relax." Cuddy hears House's steps behind her. "I diluted it for her weight and size."

"You doped my baby," Cuddy says again. She sits on the bed, picks up Joy, and is relieved with she reacts to her touch and wakes slightly.

"You keep saying that as if you're shocked," House says. He walks back into the living room. "Maybe you should remember that the next time you dump your kid on me just because you have to work."

"I had to work," Cuddy says, wrapping Joy in a blanket, "because I had to clean up your mess and sweet talk a family out of suing us for fifty million dollars." She puts Joy's bottle in the diaper bag, slings the bag over her shoulder. She's wondering if she should take Joy to the ER and check her out, just in case.

"Yeah, well next time, ask Wilson to look after her." House sits on the couch again, watches the basketball game on the TV.

"Next time," Cuddy says, "I will." She holds Joy tightly and slams the door shut behind her.

"You let her play with your Vicodin?" Cuddy holds the bottle out, four tablets visible inside the amber plastic vial.

House snatches it out of her hand. "It's not my fault that you forgot to pack a rattle," he says. "I improvised."

* * *

Cuddy is waiting on the stoop outside House's building when she hears the high pitched sound of his motorcycle from a block away.

She has both hands clasped to her face when House pulls to a stop in front of her , turns off the engine and then puts a finger in front of his lips. "She's finally asleep," he says, and zips his jacket down a little further until Cuddy sees Joy's face sticking out from underneath the leather.

Cuddy slams her hand against the brick wall to keep from shouting. She'd hit House but he's too far away.

"What the hell were you thinking?" she says. She unzips the jacket the rest of the way, but Joy is tucked in securely next to House inside the Moby Wrap he must have grabbed from the diaper bag. She has to wait while he loosens it before she can take Joy in her own arms, hold her close.

"You said that if she's colicky to take her for a ride," House says. He swings his leg off the bike and takes his cane out of its clips.

"In a car." Cuddy feels Joy snuggle in against her, finding the familiar spot where the top of her head nestles up just under her chin. "With her car seat. Where she's safe."

"She was safe," House says, his voice still low and quiet in the early autumn darkness. "The only way she'd fall is if I fell, and I don't fall. She was safer with me than she is when you're texting on your Blackberry at 70 miles per hour."

"Once," Cuddy says. "One time. And that's only because you couldn't wait fifteen minutes until I got back to the office."

She doesn't realize that she's spoken too loudly until Joy squirms against her, lets out a slight cry.

"Shhh," House says. "You're going to wake the baby."

"This," Cuddy says, "is not going in her baby book."

"Why not?" House holds out the book, open to the twelfth page. "There's a space for it and everything."

"I don't care." Cuddy takes the book from his hand, puts it back on the shelf. "My daughter is not going to have a permanent record that her first word was 'shtup.'"

"Right, raise her on a premise of lies. That'll work."

Joy is in her bed, finally asleep after coming down from the sugar high created by House feeding her Froot Loops and candy corn for lunch. "Fruit and vegetables," he'd said when Cuddy saw the kitchen. "Very healthy."

Joy had spent the next twenty minutes running between the kitchen, living room and her bedroom on her chubby toddler legs, making random high pitched squeals that Cuddy finally realized was the word "shtup," over and over again.

"I'm just seeing to her cultural education," House says. "You should thank me."

"What have you done?" Cuddy stands just inside the door, looking down at Joy.

"Mommy!" Joy jumps up from the floor, and runs to her, holding out a drawing. "I made you a picture," she says.

Cuddy manages to take her eyes off of Joy's head, where her long blonde hair has now been cut in uneven clumps and is so short it doesn't even reach her shoulders. "That's nice sweetie," she says, holding the picture of a house with trees in the front yard and something that may be a dog. Or a cat. "Now go get your things."

Cuddy waits until Joy is out of the room. "What have you done?" She asks it in a whisper, but House cringes.

"Not my fault," he says.

"I ask you to watch my daughter for two hours," Cuddy says, "two hours, and when I get back ..." She waves her hand toward Joy, who's heading into the bedroom to get her jacket.

"If you ever let her have gum, she'd know that it's supposed to stay in her mouth instead of in her hair," House says.

Cuddy shakes her head.

"Wilson suggested peanut butter, but that didn't work either," House continues.

"So ... you cut it," Cuddy covers her eyes.

"It looked funny with just one part cut, so I evened it out," he shrugs, "kind of."

"She's supposed to be a flower girl at my sister's wedding tomorrow."

"She likes it short," House says. "Isn't it more important that Joy likes her own haircut, than that she conforms to some arbitrary rules about beauty?"

"She's three. She likes everything. Hell, she even likes you."

Cuddy sighs as Joy comes out of the bedroom wearing her jacket and carrying her pink backpack. Somehow her hair looks even worse than it did two minutes earlier.

"Are we going to go see Aunt Maggie now?" Joy asks.

Cuddy takes her by the hand, reaches into her purse for her cell phone and begins scrolling through the menu to find the phone number for the salon near her house, gets ready to beg them for an emergency appointment. "In a little while," she says. "We have to stop someplace first."

Cuddy stands just inside House's office, a half-eaten candy bar in one hand, and Joy's hand gripped tightly in the other.

"You taught her to steal," she says.

Joy peeks up at House for just a moment, then goes back to staring at the carpet.

"Who says?" House doesn't get up, but he leans forward, his elbows on his desk.

Cuddy raises her eyebrows and nods toward Joy.

"At least I didn't teach her how to snitch," House says. "That's all on you." He leans back again. "Besides, all I taught her was some sleight of hand, and the importance of keeping your eye on the prize and not being distracted."

"Which she put to use in the gift shop, while she was supposed to be picking up today's newspaper for me," Cuddy said.

If Joy hadn't been so excited about getting her hands on the candy bar, and opened it while she was still in front of Cuddy, Cuddy would have never known about it. As it was, she'd had a mouth full of chocolate when Cuddy had checked in with her to see if she needed help with her homework.

"Besides, your gift shop is the one that puts candy right at a kid's eye level. That's pure temptation." House points one finger at Cuddy. "That's entrapment."

"No," Cuddy says. She takes a few more steps into his office, tosses what's left of the candy bar into the trash. "That's a week without TV privileges for Joy, and six more hours of clinic duty for you."

"It's not my fault she got caught," House says. He leans down to face Joy. "The next time we'll work more on evading capture."

"Eight hours," Cuddy says.

House opens his mouth, but doesn't get a word out before Cuddy stops him.

"Want to make it ten?" she asks.

He sighs, leans back in is chair.

Cuddy leads Joy back out of the office, and can only shake her head as Joy lingers for a moment at the door. She thinks she sees House wink at her, but isn't sure, and pulls Joy with her out into the hallway.

"Homework," she says, "now. And the next time you need a baby sitter, we're calling your Uncle James."


	2. One Time House Didn't Regret

_Written because Topaz_Eyes on LJ convinced me there was a companion fic hiding in the piece about House taking a colicky Joy on a motorcycle ride._

A bottle didn't work. Music didn't work. Picking her up didn't work. Neither did leaving her in the other room and letting her cry it out. The wailing even cut through his noise canceling headphones.

House took them off, tossed them on the desk and stared at the baby as she kicked off the blanket. The blanket fell onto a stack of journals, slid against the glossy paper and fell to the floor, dragging the journals down with it onto the floorboards where they scattered across the living room.

He rubbed his hands across his face. Perfect. Just like the kid to spread chaos everywhere, making a mess just when he had everything right where he wanted it. Like she always did.

She went silent just long enough to take in another gasp of air and let out an even louder scream.

"I don't know what you expect me to do," House said, staring down at the infant dressed in a pink jumper, her face red and her eyes wet with tears. "This isn't my idea of a good time either, you know."

He picked up the phone, started to punch in the numbers for Cuddy's cell, but stopped before he hit the final digit.

Cuddy would gloat for a week if he gave in.

"She's a little colicky, but that shouldn't be a problem, right?" Cuddy had said when she'd dropped off the baby and her things that evening. "She's just a baby. You're tougher than she is, right?" She threw the words back at him that he'd used that morning when she'd dragged herself into the office with dark shadows under her eyes and an extra large cup of coffee in her hand.

"I didn't agree to this," House had started to say, but Cuddy had ignored him, put Joy's car seat on the coffee table, then turned to stab his chest with her finger.

"No," she'd said, "you only chased off my nanny -- the third one in the past two months."

"All I did was ..."

"All you did was claim that Joy was more likely to be exposed to Ebola than the normal child because she went to the hospital's daycare once a week, and that therefore Nancy was more likely to be exposed."

"Statistically speaking ..."

"Ebola." Cuddy had repeated the word slowly, letting each consonant hang in the air.

She'd poked him in the chest one more time, then turned away, put the diaper bag on the couch.

"Bottle," she'd said, putting it on the table next to Joy's car seat. Joy was chewing on three fingers, watching Cuddy's movements.

"Diapers," Cuddy had said, putting them next to the bottle. "Toys, pacifier, formula -- just in case."

"How long is this dinner?"

Cuddy had turned, her hands on her hips. "He's a very important benefactor," she'd said. "He also likes to linger over coffee and gossip. If he'll toss us an extra hundred thousand dollars, it's worth a little more time."

"Did you reserve a hotel room too? Just in case?"

Cuddy had sighed, leaned down over the car seat, her hair falling past her face so House couldn't make out her expression, but he heard a soft kiss, before Cuddy stood up again.

"If she gets colicky, take her for a ride," she'd said. "Joy likes movement."

"Movement," House muttered now as the baby let loose with another cry. He picked her up, settled her against his shoulder, and shuddered as she screamed into his ear.

"Where the hell did she find you anyway?" he asked. "Mommy wants a demon child dot com?"

Naming the baby Joy must have been Cuddy's idea of a joke, some cosmic prank set in motion the night that House had followed Wilson into the shop and saw her there standing next to a crib.

House bounced the baby in his arms, and she seemed to quiet just a bit. He craned his neck to look down at her.

"You urp on this shirt, and you're really going to be in trouble," he said.

Her breath hitched for a moment, and he started to sway from side to side, but stopped short as pain ratcheted up from his leg and into his hips. "This isn't going to work," he said.

He put the baby down again, but her cries only picked up in volume.

Cuddy had left before he'd told her that his car was in the shop.

House sat on his couch, facing Joy in her seat. He put his hands over his ears. It didn't help much.

He picked up the phone and dialed Wilson's home number, but it went to the machine. He hung up without leaving a message, called his cell.

"I'm busy," Wilson said when he answered it.

"Not that busy," House said. "If you were, you never would have answered in the first place."

"That's because you would have just called back five more times until I did answer." House recognized the sounds of the intensive care unit from Wilson's end of the line: the low beeps from a monitor, the wheeze of a ventilator, hushed voices.

"Luckily for you, I don't need you," House said, "just your car."

"Not now," Wilson said, and hung up.

House stared at the phone in his hand for a moment, then back at the baby. She seemed to quiet slightly to just whimpering for a few moments, then picked up steam again.

He sat back against the couch, put his fingers in his ears. That didn't help either. He thought about whiskey, but was pretty sure Cuddy would just bitch even more if she came back and found him passed out in bed, or her kid over the legal limit.

He turned away, saw his leather jacket hanging from the chair, looked from it to the baby and back again.

He reached down into the diaper bag, pulled out a stretchy piece of fabric, wrapped it around himself, then picked up Joy.

"You like movement? You're getting movement," he said.

He held the baby against his chest, feeling her breathing, feeling the heat of her skin against his neck as he wrapped the fabric around both of them to hold her safely against him. He slid on the jacket, then zipped it up until it came nearly to the top of the baby's head.

He paused for a moment, looking down at the wisps of fine blonde hair on the top of her head. It was a warm autumn night, but if the kid ended up with an ear infection, House would just end up with the blame. He reached into the diaper bag again, his fingers finding something soft. He pulled it out, held it in front of himself.

"You have got to be kidding me." The hat was pink and fuzzy with cat ears poking out from either side of it. He looked down at the baby. "I'd scream too if Cuddy came near me with this thing."

It was the only hat in the bag, though, so he rolled his eyes, tied it under her chin, and grabbed his keys.

The jacket muffled her sounds as he stepped out onto the street, and House carefully swung his leg up over the bike, moving slowly so he wouldn't lose his balance with Joy's extra weight.

Once he pulled on his helmet, and started the engine, he couldn't hear her at all, but could still sense her cries -- her deep breaths, the moisture from her tears soaking his shirt.

He pulled away from the curb and out into the dark.

He went around the block twice and sensed her quieting, her breaths growing more steady. Traffic was light, but he hit a red light and she began crying again. He took a longer route out away from the apartment, along a road with fewer traffic lights.

Joy quieted down again and he felt her arms moving against his chest, the fingers of her right hand finding their way to the buttons on his shirt, gripping them, then letting them go again.

House headed south out of town and followed the roads winding past the river, past subdivisions and finally out to the farms.

He could feel Joy settling into slow, deep breaths, her body losing the tight jerking motions she'd had when she was crying. Even her arms and hands calmed down, her fingers curling into the palms of her hands.

It was warm with her small body pressed up against his, and whenever he slowed he could feel her breathing, even feel the faint echo of her heartbeat.

He remembered seeing Cuddy just after she'd brought the baby home, standing there in the yellow nursery, her hand lightly resting on Joy's chest as she slept. She'd had a slight smile on her face, her posture relaxed and at ease for the first time in months.

She'd been happy, House thought, and grinned. And a happy Cuddy, was an easy Cuddy. If she was planning play time with the kid, she wouldn't have as much time to track his every movement. Maybe she'd just sign off on his next request, rather than fighting with him, so she could get home in time for milk and cookies.

"Maybe you're good for something after all, kiddo," House said to the bundle beneath his jacket.

House could tell when Joy finally fell into deep and steady sleep, but he drove a few miles more -- the moonlight shining high above in the night sky, dry leaves skittering across the pavement in the light breeze. When he finally headed back toward town, he drove slowly, easing up for every yellow light rather than trying to beat it.

They rolled past the subdivisions again, and the sprawling neighborhoods packed with oversized houses. At one light he came to a stop, and felt Joy jerk slightly in her sleep. He eased the zipper down to look at Joy's face. Her eyes were closed, the redness finally had gone from her skin. He zipped his jacket up again, and patted the bundle against his chest.

The light turned green, and he headed for home.


End file.
